Defensive Database Programming
Inside this book, you will find dozens of practical, defensive programming techniques that will improve the quality of your T-SQL code and increase its resilience and robustness.
How to Become an Exceptional DBA, 2nd Edition
Brad McGehee provides a "career guide" for DBAs. It is intended both to help prospective DBAs find a "way in" to the profession, and to advise existing DBAs on how they can excel at their jobs, and so become Exceptional DBAs.
Physical Security
The physical security of our systems might be a bigger problem in the future as more and more hackers are finding ways into secure areas.
SQL Server Backup and Restore
A DBA's tasks, from day-to-day, are rarely constant; with one exception: the need to ensure each and every day that any database in their charge can be restored and recovered, in the event of error of disaster. In this book, you'll discover how to perform each of these backup and restore operations using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), basic T-SQL scripts and Red Gate's SQL Backup tool.
SQL Server Concurrency: Locking, Blocking and Row Versioning
Your application can have impeachable indexes and queries, but they won't help you if you can't get to your data because another application has it locked. That's why every DBA and developer must understand SQL Server concurrency and how to troubleshoot excessive blocking or deadlocking. Kalen Delaney's book is your guide.
SQL Server Transaction Log Management by Tony Davis and Gail Shaw
When a SQL Server database is operating smoothly and performing well, there is no need to be particularly aware of the transaction log, beyond ensuring that every database has an appropriate backup regime and restore plan in place. When things go wrong, however, a DBA's reputation depends on a deeper understanding of the transaction log, both what it does, and how it works. An effective response to a crisis requires rapid decisions based on understanding its role in ensuring data integrity.
The Red Gate Guide to SQL Server Team-based Development
This book shows how to use of mixture of home-grown scripts, native SQL Server tools,
and tools from the Red Gate SQL Toolbelt, to successfully develop database applications in a team environment,
and make database development as similar as possible to "normal" development.
The Third Evolution
Steve Ballmer is retiring in the next year and Microsoft needs to find a new CEO. Steve Jones has a few thoughts.
10 Things I Hate About Interviewing With You Webinar
This is a PASS VC Webinar, taking place on August 28, 1PM EDT. Get interviewing tips from both sides of the desk. Based on Thomas LaRock's 10 Things blog posts, this presentation by both Thomas LaRock and Karen Lopez will give you valuable insight into the interviewing process and how to improve your chances of landing that next job.
Blogs
Who Are You Doing It For?
By Brian Kelley
But as I've matured over the years, I came to realize that I needed...
Presenting Twice in May 2026
By alevyinroc
I will be presenting my latest session, Documenting Your Work for Worry-Free Vacations, in-person...
Finding the Next Sequence Value: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I saw a question asking about the next sequence value and decided to try...
Forums
DB Design Methods
I've read a few posts regarding what we use to design DB models and...
Auto Update Statistics not triggering on filtered indexes
I've got a table with 186,703,969 rows, about 300GB of data. There are several...
What is the difference between SQL Server and SQL Database?
I created a SQL Database in Azure Portal but I've just noticed it also...
Question of the Day
An Unusual Identity
What values are returned when I run this code?
CREATE TABLE dbo.IdentityTest2
(
id NUMERIC(10,0) IDENTITY(10,10) PRIMARY KEY,
somevalue VARCHAR(20)
)
GO
INSERT dbo.IdentityTest2
(
somevalue
)
VALUES
( 'Steve')
, ('Bill')
GO
SELECT top 10
id
FROM dbo.IdentityTest2 See possible answers